


Addressed To:

by Star_Crow



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Babies, Baby Fic, Dad!Jughead, F/M, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Future Fic, Letters, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-02-03 15:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12751167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Crow/pseuds/Star_Crow
Summary: “Dear Eli,God knows when you’ll actually read this, if at all, but I’m starting with an apology, then honesty and another apology, then wherever my head takes me. The first apology is that this is probably going to be a long read. Settle in, kid."Or: Jughead has been a father for a whole two weeks and he's already writing for his son.





	Addressed To:

Jughead was tired. 

That wasn’t unusual. The whole nights that Jug had spent on his computer, furiously typing up that new article idea that’d been bothering him all day, were numerous. The nights where Betty’d find him turfed up on the couch, in the back of his car or even at his desk, were even more common. 

Betty considered it a sort of miracle when Jughead did manage to find his way into bed at normal o’clock. 

But, in all his twenty-four years of creative sleeping spots, he’d finally peaked at max exhaustion. Then again, he’d drawn that conclusion every night the last two weeks. Thanks to Eli Jones.

He couldn’t feel it, that fuzziness in the back of his head or the weight on his eyelids to indicate that he was going to drift off again. Everything was still in focus. The light sounds of Betty and Eli’s breathing, Betty beside him and Eli laid out on his shoulder. Eli’s mobile was still spinning a little. It was creeping Jug out, the moving star-shaped shadows on the wall, but he couldn’t just get up and take it down.

Jug was awake, and he would be for a while yet. There was only one thing. 

His hand began to search down his side of the bed, painstakingly careful to keep the rest of his body stock still. His fingers curled around the icy metal of his laptop and he slowly hauled it up on his lap. 

A quick flick of his eyes to check that Betty still had her back to him and he opened the screen. 

The light was, as expected, blinding in the almost pitch darkness of their master bedroom. If Jughead believed in every-day superpowers, his was how quickly he could adjust his eyes to laptop light. Well, any sort of bright light. One, two blinks and he was good to go. Watching Betty spend a good five minutes trying to see her work was totally hilarious to him. 

It was a great little niche for Jug, really. Betty had a much better daytime work ethic than he did. She’d outdo him ten-speed so long as the sun was in the sky. Jughead tended to be more the night creature out of the two of them. Some of his most successful pieces had been written on that very laptop in that very bed. A mug of something strongly caffeinated by his side helped but he’d do without just fine. He was going into his ‘Unpublishables’ folder tonight anyway.

To be an author was to translate a bit of your soul into words and release it into the world. Most of the documents in Jughead’s unpublishables were half-constructed ideas that he’d typed up and decided to forget about until further notice. There was one or two pieces, though, that were some of the clearest things Jug had ever written. But they were addressed and personal. 

“Dear Eli,

God knows when you’ll actually read this, if at all, but I’m starting with an apology, then honesty and another apology, then wherever my head takes me. The first apology is that this is probably going to be a long read. Settle in, kid.

First, a quick preliminary setting-the-scene. It’s 01:47am on November 17th 2025. In a couple of hours, you’ll be exactly two weeks old and right now you’re fast asleep on my shoulder. The Eli that’ll be reading this won’t be the same Eli that’s here with me now so here’s the deal: you really are adorable and that’s saying something when it comes from me. Impressive amount of hair for a two-week old, blond like your mom. My eyes. You’re still too new for me to tell just yet, but I think you’ve got my nose. Sorry about that, E. 

It’s only been two weeks, but already this is getting familiar. Just me, you, the dark, and an empty bottle. I’m aware that makes it sound like I’ve been drinking in bed whilst holding my son. The bottle is yours, in fact, so if anything you’re the binge-drinker. The first couple of nights your mom said it was pointless for me to trek all the way downstairs and heat milk for you when she had it on tap, but I felt so useless when she was pregnant. My job was all at the start and then temporarily over for nine months. This is from a guy who loves being in the thick of it. It’s awful to say, but I don’t think I could feel close to you while you were still growing. Feeding you, holding you like this, it feels really damn good. Plus your mom is so tired, Eli. Way more than I am. No offence, I love you, but you’re major hard work. Besides, I like this. This last fortnight has been full of people. Archie and Ronnie, my parents and Jellybean, Polly and the twins, Mr and Mrs Cooper, Kevin, even Cheryl, and they all want a piece of you. You are the first after all. I don’t mind it, but the selfish bit of me only wants to share you with Betty. This sort of time is amazing, even your mom’s asleep, and for a moment you’re just my boy. My son. 

I’m not going to hold you out on the truth any longer. Here it is. I was convinced I was getting a daughter right from the start. Adamant, even. Your mom was as well so I guess you can go get an apology from her, too, when you’re done here. We were so sure that we’d already picked out a name: Juliet. Luckily for you, we weren’t confident enough to go and paint your room hot pink, so there’s that. But we did have a name in mind just in case, Elias Tate Jones. No one really loves their name, but it’s not half as bad as Forsythe Pendleton Jones IV. I hope you don’t mind it atleast, though it’s going to be pretty rough explaining to your friends that you’re sort of named after the owner of a diner in some weird backwards town.

Your next question is probably why I was so certain that you’d be a girl. I don’t know, exactly. I’m a writer. It’d be so easy for me to say it was intuition, albeit askew intuition. It’s not been long, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and the reason I wanted a daughter was because I had nothing. I think I preferred the idea of the clean-slatedness of it all. My sister, your aunt, she had even less of our dad than I did and I don’t remember a bit of it. A father raising his son I knew, not a good way and certainly not in the way I wanted to raise you. I loved my dad to hell and back and I still do but he fucked it up. Big time. The drinking, the dodgy dealings, the Serpents, the house, all of it. He tried to make it all up in the end, he still is, and I hold onto that every day but honestly it was too late to fix it way before he went to prison. 

You terrified me, Eli. You still do in a way and I think you always will. I asked my dad, Betty’s dad, and they both said that that’s the way it’s meant to feel. The doctor said you were a boy and I’ve never been so shit-scared in my life. What if I ruined you? What if I made myself into my dad and made you into me? Betty said that it’d be a blessing if you turned out anything like me, but she means the good parts. There’s not much I haven’t told your mom, she can’t know what it’s like to sleep on the floor of a projection room in the middle of winter or to realise that your family isn’t ever going to be together again. I think we can inherit moments. I know that it would destroy me if you got anywhere close to my Top 40 Worst Hits.

I’ve got a philosophy, kid. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of your own one day, since you’ve got Cooper blood and Jones blood. It took me the first few moments of your life to work it out. I know what bad parenting is, Elias. I can recognise it a mile off, because I had it firsthand. A lot of other parents don’t have that. I know where things will go wrong so I know how to make things right. I promise you I’m going to try everything I can to avoid those. Actually, I’m going to do everything. I’m not going to let anything happen to you on any watch. I’m not afraid of being your dad anymore, Eli, because there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.

Humans are weird. Each of us strive to be great, the greatest. We do worth-while things in the hope of being the best and leaving a mark on this world that we know damn well will keep on spinning with or without us. At the same time, we procreate, and as soon as we do that, we stop caring about ourselves and we want our children to be better, to leave a bigger mark. We supersede ourselves, over and over and over again. 

If I were most parents, here’s the part where I’d tell you that I wouldn’t mind if you lived the most average life in the world. I am going to tell you that I will always love you, Eli, no matter where you go or what you do. The unconventional part is me telling you to live the craziest, most action-packed life that you can. The world is way too big and filled with way too many interesting things for me to let my son sit on his ass and miss out on it all. Don’t ever be afraid to defy convention. The Jones’ have good guts: trust yours and it will rarely lead you wrong. Do what makes you happy.

I’m telling you to live a life. I know that’s a steep thing to ask of a two-week old baby who can’t even hold his head up yet, but I’m here. Always will be.

 

Dad.”


End file.
